Passenger planes could be protected from terrorists by laser defence shield

Israel carries out series of tests included a wide variety of threats that the
SkyShield system would have to tackle in order to protect passenger aircrafts

A passenger plane takes off from Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv in IsraelPhoto: AP

By Inna Lazareva, Jerusalem

8:15PM GMT 27 Feb 2014

Israel has successfully tested a new missile defence system which has the power to deflect rockets targeting civilian aircraft, effectively forcing missiles to change their course mid-flight.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Defence Ministry carried out the latest tests of the ‘Sky Shield’ system, which involved firing live missiles at an aircraft. The new technology deflected all the missiles and was proclaimed “100 per cent successful” by Eitan Eshel, head of Research and Development.

The system is "the most advanced of its kind in the world, designed to secure the aircraft automatically", said Israel’s Defence Ministry.

Using laser technology, the defence shield employs a thermal camera to detect and deflect rockets fired from the ground.

The technological know-how has been under development for over a decade, triggered by a failed attempt by Islamist terrorists to fire two surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli aircraft taking off from Kenya in 2002.

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The development comes as the terror threat in the skies over the Middle East is growing.

On Monday, Israel bombed targets on the Lebanon-Syria border, with strikes reportedly aimed at preventing sophisticated weapons systems - including advanced anti-aircraft missiles - from coming into Hezbollah’s possession. In the wake of the attack, Hezbollah has threatened to retaliate and Israel’s communities in the north of the country have been placed under alert.

Last month, militants in the Sinai shot down an Egyptian army helicopter using a shoulder-fired missile.

Ten shoulder-fired Strela anti-aircraft missiles were launched by Palestinians during the brief war between Israel and Hamas in 2012, as was reported in Israeli daily Haaretz. (http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1843807 ).

No plane was damaged but it marked a significant improvement of Hamas’s military capabilities.

These arrived from Libya, after the collapse of Gadhafi’s regime which triggered a massive flow of arms across the Middle East and North Africa.

The airspace threat extends its reach also beyond the region.

Israel’s Channel 2 news said that in the past year alone, European authorities had foiled eight attempts to fire missiles at airplanes.

“The threat is there”, Lt. Col. Eran Ramat, Head of Aviational Research at Israel’s Fisher Institute told The Telegraph.

“Terror is all around us, and the best thing we can do is to try and locate it. I know there are many efforts worldwide, around all the airports, to prevent this from happening. But still, one ‘success’ is enough.”

“Intelligence is major investment that can help this kind of terrorism”, alongside systems such as Sky Shield, noted Lt. Col. Ramat.

It is not yet known when Sky Shield will become operational.

According to Israel’s Channel 2 report in 2012, the ‘Sky Shield’ is likely to cost $1 million for each airplane fitted, and the system would be installed on all Israeli civilian aircraft.